Insect-based industrial symbiosis: Navigating deep-scaling barriers through holistic biomimicry

In a world with finite resources, insect farming is a promising bioeconomy technology for nutrient upcycling. However, stakeholders’ acceptability is a highly relevant overlook challenge to scaling. The PhD research delves into how systemic design can play a pivotal role in supporting deep-scaling insect farming in European agrifood systems. It contributes both methodologically and ontologically to the field, aiming to enhance niche innovations. The study addresses stakeholder acceptability as a deep scale barrier in insect farming by accessing situated knowledge to inform the design of culturally sensitive insect farming value propositions. Preliminary results from Flanders show that engaging stakeholders in a sensemaking practice helps researchers access situated knowledge and silent perspectives concerning both (1) the system’s current state and (2) peculiar dynamics at play in adopting technologies. Those data were leveraged to inform the design of several value propositions, which showed a high acceptability rate in a multicriteria analysis.